An appeal from Peter Brown

Our free software community has grown considerably in the 25 years
since the Free Software Foundation was created by Richard Stallman to
be a home for the GNU Project and to undertake the advocacy campaigns
to advance the cause of free software. As we now celebrate reaching
our quarter-century mark, we can reflect that free software is
everywhere, doing everything, often in the most mission-critical
situations.

Our community has created the philosophy, systems and tools that
enhance society's ability to communicate and live in freedom. From
Wikipedia to the US Department of Defense, from CERN to the New York
Stock Exchange, free software is being deployed by our members, and
with it the values of cooperation and sharing that we care so much
about. Free software is the embodiment of how humanity can progress
collaboratively. Its success is inspiring people to apply its
philosophies to new areas in culture, government and activism.

This holiday season I've been reading an advance copy of the second
edition of Free Software, Free Society and I wanted to reflect with
you on one aspect of the aspirational goals that Stallman described in
his GNU Manifesto from 1985:

By working on and using GNU rather than
proprietary programs, we can be hospitable to everyone and obey the
law. In addition, GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to
rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of
harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For
about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness
that money cannot replace.

The Free Software Foundation speaks out about the ethical questions
around the use of technology, and the importance of having computer
user freedom, but rarely do we step back to say, to what end? Free
software, and its values of sharing and collaboration, reduces the
burden on us all individually. It creates abundance in software. And
with abundance secured in one area, we are individually freed to
aspire to achieve new goals, to break new frontiers. Collaboration in
software, which happens across all national boundaries, also creates
an opportunity to dispel the natural separation and conflict that
occurs. Within our own GNU Project we have copyright assignments from
thousands of individuals spanning 66 nation states, and the free
software movement, launched here in Massachusetts, is now a worldwide
phenomenon.

Stallman's ability to set out such a vision in his manifesto, and
then get down to the practicalities of the years-long coding effort
necessary to replace Unix and make that vision a reality, gives me
great comfort when I see the barriers still ahead of free software and
computer user freedom. The vision he set out in the GNU
Manifesto gives us all reason to join Stallman and our fellow
free software advocates in advancing the cause on all fronts --
because we already know how far we've come and how much we've
achieved.

Today, our campaign efforts are focused on ending the patenting of
software, and on ending the social acceptance of Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM). We are campaigning for free data formats and free
standards. Our publication of the GNU GPL and our guardianship of GNU
Project provide the basis for fulfilling our mission to advance and
defend the rights of all free software users.

This year, the FSF will also be undertaking a series of new public
advocacy campaigns to advance awareness for free software. This, our
first series of general GNU/Linux adoption campaigns, is possible only
because we now have fully free distributions utilizing a kernel,
Linux-Libre, that has removed all the nonfree code normally present in
Linux. And it is only possible because our new hardware endorsement
program will make it increasingly possible to find hardware that
respects our freedom.

Your donation is a vital part of putting into action these
campaigns: to carry forward the ideals represented in Stallman's
GNU Manifesto.